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I give the view of the state of the subforum at 1.1.2017 ...

Sorted according date of the post ...

Sorted according number of Views

The original aim of this subforum was to collect here sources about Tarot and Playing cards ... as the title shows:

"The Library (East Wing)
Tarot History related Books and Articles."

We've noted a lot of Tarot History Books and Articles at other places, but usually nobody thought of adding a link to this place.
So that's a longer work to do, and it will not be done in one step. This post will be replaced finally by that, what will be the result of the work.
This thread can be used to add suggestions to the running work. Or points or works, which are suggested.

Of special interest are naturally books, which are available in the web ... either full or in parts or as snippet view.
For this we have earlier collections arranged by ourselves or single notes distributed in various articles.

We have Franco Pratesi's and Andrea Vitali's article to sort, we have own articles in Forums and we've own webpages.

That all is rather much. Much more difficult than the Web link enterprise.

Revised Jan. 4, adding one item at the bottom and a few more comments on the usefulness of the books mentioned.

Yes, good idea, Huck, especially since many of the books and articles are online, one place or another. I suppose those count as websites, but I will consider them books and articles.

We will all have different ideas about what is worth putting in such a list. So I am reserving this space for my list, which I will update as I can, from my posts. I am for the moment dealing only with books, putting them in chronological order, but in 3 categories, with links, as the books themselves are largely unobtainable except when online. I am only listing ones l have personally examined, in one form or other. I am mostly including books from 1966 and after, except that I have a historical section of major esoteric tarot original works since 1770, because I have done a lot with the ones I list.

Jan. 2, 2017:

Books in English:

Moakley, Gertrude, The Tarot cards painted by Bonifacio Bembo, 1966. I would call this book the beginning of the scientific approach to the tarot. Available in libraries. These days it's more of a reference work than anything else.

Dieter Hoffman, The Playing Card: an illustrated history, 1972. Translated from German. Not hard to find.

Brian Innes, The Tarot: How to use and interpret the cards, 1977. Actually a good introduction to the history of the 22 "major arcana", including the occultists' decks, profusely illustrated, with divination amounting to only about a quarter of its 88 pages.

Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. 1, 1978 and 2, 1986, are essential purchases. Vol. 4 has occasionally some material that he didn't find earlier, but it is hardly worth buying the book for. The other two I look at constantly. Available in libraries, and frequently for sale somewhere.

Game of Tarot, by Michael Dummett, 1980. Unobtainable except from libraries. The seminal work on the tarot from a scientific perspective. These days, it's mostly a reference work, but something you have to read on a particular issue if you want to think it through. Someone should put it on the Web.

John Shephard, The Tarot Trumps: Cosmos in Miniature, the Structure and Symbolism of the Twenty-Two Tarot Trump Cards, 1980. Available cheaply. A forgotten classic, in my view not in the least outmoded.

Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot, a Textbook of Mystical Philosophy, 1983, online at https://archive.org/details/RobertWang- ... Tarot-1983. This is supposedly the best introduction to the Golden Dawn tradition of tarot interpretation. It certainly is on a different level from Decker and Dummett's Occult Tarot (see below).

Robert O'Neill, Tarot Symbolism, 1986. Another forgotten classic, somewhat useless these days. Available from J.-M David's Association for Tarot Studies.

Stephen R. Franklin, Origins of the Tarot Deck: a study of the Astronomical Substructure of Game and Divining Boards, 1988. Snippets are online. In the Bidev et al tradition. In my local library, quite forgotten about even by me. Surely not worth reading.

Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, A History of The Occult Tarot 1870-1970, 2002. Snippets at https://books.google.com/books?id=0YB-A ... 0Q6AEIIjAB. This is meant as a continuation of Wicked Pack of Cards. I haven't found it very useful. You'd hardly guess, except for some names, that it covers much the same people as Wang's book.

Tiberio Gonnard and Giordano Berti, The Visconti Tarot, Scarabeo, 2002. Berti just wrote the introduction. Translation from Italian. Claims to be about cartomancy, but the short cartomantic interpretations are standard occultist views and have little to do with the very detailed and valuable analysis of the symbolism in the details of the PMB cards.

Michael Dummett and John McLeod, A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: the Game of Triumphs, vol. 1 and vol. 2, 2004. Vol. 1 is available in U.S. libraries. I don't know vol. 2. For specialists only.

Paul Huson, Mystical origins of the tarot, from ancient roots to modern usage, 2004. Generous selections online at https://books.google.com/books?id=D3JnAwAAQBAJ. Good job relating Etteilla's word-lists to those of the Golden Dawn. The first 50 pages or so are online, then selected pages (discussion of Golden Dawn omitted). Accurate, readable, one of the best introductions currently in English, although you wouldn't guess that from the title.

Robert Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, Divination, 2005. Historical part online at https://books.google.com/books?id=jQdGi ... &q&f=false. Tries to be historical and reflects current thinking, but not very careful about historical details. If he doesn't give a good footnote, don't trust him. If he does, read the source, as he doesn't always get it right. His latest book, Tarot and Alchemy, is worse. His idea of alchemy is that it is a set of pretty pictures worth associating to the occult tarot. Needless to say, he is very popular. He does have interesting intuitions.

Alain Bougearel, Franco Cardini, and Andrea Vitali, coordinators: The Caravan of Tarot: Tarots - History-Art-Magic. Online at http://www.letarot.it/cgi-bin/pages/mos ... nglese.pdf. Also in print. For Italian and French version links, see those sections. Unclear when it was published. The title page says 1995--an exhibition then-- but the back page has 2006. It's pretty good.

Ross Sinclair Caldwell, Thierry Depaulis, and Marco Ponzi, Explaining the Tarot: Two Italian Renaissance Essays on the Making of the Tarot Pack, 2010. The Discorso by Piscina is online, but not the Anonymous, almost as indispensable. Both are 1560s Italy, essential works.

Depaulis, Le Tarot Révélé, 2013. Undoubtedly the most up to date and accurate short introduction to tarot history now available. There remain some glaringly unjustified statements--of which Franco Pratesi's work in 2016 has looked at some issues in his chapter 1. The book has summaries in English and German, of use to someone who wants it in a 5 page nutshell.

Vitali, ed. Il Castello dei Tarocchi, 2010. 19 essays by 12 authors, many known on THF, all in Italian.

Sandrina Bandera and Marco Tanzi “Quelle carte de triumphi che se fanno a Cremona”: I Tarocchi dei Bembo, 2013. Exhibition catalog with latest opinions on Brera-Brambilla, Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo, and occasionally even the Cary-Yale. Some excerpts, with my translations, and pictures from the book at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1058&hilit=Bandera.

Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes par M***. 1773 second edition of French original online in Gallica. https://books.google.com/books?id=CI85A ... alse.There is supposedly a translation into English by Caitlin Matthews, which you can get as part of a course on the Petit Etteilla, which is what this book gives a cartomantic--pardon, cartonomantic--system for. I once saw the course advertised but can't find it currently. He later expanded this system to include the tarot.

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the second Cahier of this Work, c. 1785. Selections transcribed and translated by me at http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/ (but not the posts ending "...in the Etteilla tradition", which are something else.

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the third Cahier of this Work. Translated in full with supplements by me at http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com/, with links to a transcription of the original. This is the first of the Cahiers actually published, in 1783 (I suspect that the "1783" on the title page of the First Cahier is to be taken with a grain of salt. It is probably not the original edition, no matter what it says.)

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the fourth Cahier of this Work, c. 1786?. Reprinted in Jaques Halbronn, Etteilla: L'Astrologie du Livre de Thot (1785) suivi par Recherches sur L'Histoire de l"Astrologie et du Tarot, par Jacques Halbronn, 1993. This is Etteilla's attempt to relate his tarot to astrology, chiefly by means of assigning the zodiac signs in order to cards 1-12 of his deck and the planets, in order, to cards 71-77, with 68-70 given to three other astrological signs. The rest I don't understand. I have not tried to translate any of it.

Claude Hugand-Jejalel (a follower of Etteilla), Faites-mieux, j'y consense, ou Les Instructions d'Isis, Divulgees par un Electeur de la Commune de Lyon, en l'annee 1789 (Do better, I agree, or The Instructions of Isis, Divulged by an Elector of the Commune of Lyon, in the year 1789). I have transcribed and translated a portion of this pamphlet, which explains the layout of the ancient "Temple of Memphis" as understood by Etteilla, at http://templeinmemphis.blogspot.com/

Oswald Wirth, Tarot of the Magicians. Most recent edition with helpful forward by Mary Greer, 2012. This is a reissue, with some mistakes, of the 1980 translation put out by Wieser, which is more accurate (the 2012 did not repage some of the internal references which now had different page numbers) and has more of Wirth's illustrations. The 1980 is relatively inexpensive. The translation is sometimes inaccurate toward the end (and in the title!). So it should be checked against Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Age, originally 1927, continually reprinted in French with re-engraved images of the majors. I have used Wirth in my blog on "Tarot and Kabbalah", starting with the post at http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/2015/ ... latin.html, to show his continuity with earlier sources.

On Depaulis, Le Tarot Révélé, 2013: I think the single most useful thing we, or maybe I, could do for beginners, and perhaps non-beginners, would be to do a translation of at least the first five chapters of this book (up to p. 70, at least a third of which is pictures), which we would all annotate with suggestions for further study. It is not very long, filled with pictures that can be skipped, but maps and tables that can't. However I am wondering about the ramifications as far as infringing on the territory of others, namely the author and the publisher. But it seems a shape to limit the access to this book.

Also, in Italian, there are three other books worthy of note:

Franco Pratesi, Giochi di carte nel Granducato di Toscana, 2015.

Franco Pratesi, Giochi di carte nella repubblica fiorentina, 2016. I know that this one at least in part reproduces essays that are in Italian on his website.

P. A. Rossi, I. Li Vigni, eds. Il Ludus Triumphorum o Tarot: carte de gioco o alfabeto del destino?, 2011. These are papers from a conference in Genoa in 2010. Paolo Rossi has an article collecting earliest references to playing cards and triumphs. There are a few we haven't looked at in detail. I will try to post and translate those passages.

Added Jan. 4: Biancastella Antonino, Morena Poltronieri, Ernesto Fazioli, Antichi giochi e Tarocchi a Bologna. 2014. Papers read at a Dec. 2014 conference in conjunction with an exhibition at the University of Bologna, with pictures of some items. Articles by Andrea Vitali ("Ludus triomphorum" al "Ludus Tarochorum"), one by Gerolomo Zorli on the game of tarocchino bolognese, Giovanni Pelosini on hermeticism and tarocchi, and several others. I regret to say I have not yet studied it in sufficient depth.

Kaplan has in Tarot Encyclopedia I from p. 347-376 (30 pages with roughly 60 entries for each = c. 1800, Kaplan states "more than 1700") sources.
Kaplan has in Tarot Encyclopedia II more than 1300 sources "not included in Volume 1" (page 505-532).

Hodson, Donald
County Atlases of the British Isles, Vol I
The Tewin Press, Welwyn, 1984
Describes some geographical packs, and gives good accounts of Lenthall and Bowles
text in English. 200pp largely unillustrated.

Horr, Norton T.
A Bibliography of Card-Games and of the History of Playing-Cards
see Jessel, Frederic - A Bibliography of Works in English on Playing Cards and Gaming
Janssen, Han
De Geschiedenis van de Speelkaart
Uitgeverij Elmar b.v., Rijswijk, 1985
ISBN 906120 4674
text in Dutch, English summary. 356 pages, profusely illustrated.

Jessel, Frederic
A Bibliography of Works in English on Playing Cards and Gaming
Longmans Green & Co, London, 1905
and

Horr, Norton T.
A Bibliography of Card-Games and of the History of Playing-Cards
Cleveland, Ohio, 1892
Republished in one volume
Patterson Smith, Montclair N.J., 1972
text in English. No illustrations.

Singer, Samuel Weller
Researches into the History of Playing Cards, with illustrations of the origin of printing and engraving on wood
London, 1816
text in English.

Taylor, The Reverend S.
The History of Playing Cards With Anecdotes of Their Use in Conjuring, Fortune-Telling and Card-Sharping
John Camden Hotten, London, 1865
ISBN 0 8048 1026 5
(This is also available as a reprint pocketbook published by Tuttle, Rutland and Tokio, 1973, ISBN 0 8048 1026 5)
text in English.

Taylor, The Reverend Ed. S.
The History of Playing Cards With Anecdotes of Their Use in Conjuring, Fortune-Telling and Card-Sharping
Reprinted by Charles E Tuttle Company, Rutland Vermont & Tokyo Japan, 1973
ISBN 0 8048 1026 5
text in English.

Tilley, Roger
Playing Cards
Octopus, London, 1973
ISBN 0 7064 0049 6
text in English.
(First published 1967 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, also published with German text and title "Spielkarten", by Parkland, Stuttgart with date 1967)

Dummett, Michael and McLeod, John
A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack
The Game of Triumphs, Volume One
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004
ISBN 0-7734-6447-6 (v. 1)
text in English, 401 pages, 13 colour plates

Dummett, Michael and McLeod, John
A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack
The Game of Triumphs, Volume Two
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004
ISBN 0-7734-6449-2 (v. 2)
text in English, 509 pages, 12 colour plates

Moakley, Gertrude
The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family. An Iconographic and Historical Study by Gertrude Moakley.
The New York Public Library, 1966
Library of Congress CCN 65-18551
text in English.

Perhaps, for the ones in those lists that you know, you could give some opinions about their current usefulness, and for whom (i.e. beginners/advanced). The list is too long to be useful in itself. Although I must say I didn't know about the one by Yale. I need to find that one. Also, some of these books are available on the Web. When I made up my list, much of the actual time used was in checking to see what was on the web.
Huck.

.. Perhaps one should find first a solution for beginners with some focus on sources from the category "available in the web"

Well, on the Web you generally won't get the caliber of writing that you get in a book. It's a fact. There's nothing the caliber of Depaulis's recent book/catalog. Unless maybe some book that is also on the Web. On the "West Wing" section of the Library, perhaps you could identify what you think are good websites for a beginner. On this side, we can identify books and articles that are in print (and maybe also on the Web), and rate them.

Most ICPS articles, except for recent ones (i.e. the last couple of years), are on the Web. You just have to "Ask Alexander". https://askalexander.org/
Of course you have to know what to ask. But it's pretty accommodating. You just type in a name or subject, or whatever. I've even asked for vol. number and number number. It brings up a mess of pages, and you click on one that looks promising.

mikeh wrote:Revised Jan. 4, adding one item at the bottom and a few more comments on the usefulness of the books mentioned.

Yes, good idea, Huck, especially since many of the books and articles are online, one place or another. I suppose those count as websites, but I will consider them books and articles.

We will all have different ideas about what is worth putting in such a list. So I am reserving this space for my list, which I will update as I can, from my posts. I am for the moment dealing only with books, putting them in chronological order, but in 3 categories, with links, as the books themselves are largely unobtainable except when online. I am only listing ones l have personally examined, in one form or other. I am mostly including books from 1966 and after, except that I have a historical section of major esoteric tarot original works since 1770, because I have done a lot with the ones I list.

Jan. 2, 2017:

Books in English:

Moakley, Gertrude, The Tarot cards painted by Bonifacio Bembo, 1966. I would call this book the beginning of the scientific approach to the tarot. Available in libraries. These days it's more of a reference work than anything else.

Dieter Hoffman, The Playing Card: an illustrated history, 1972. Translated from German. Not hard to find.

Brian Innes, The Tarot: How to use and interpret the cards, 1977. Actually a good introduction to the history of the 22 "major arcana", including the occultists' decks, profusely illustrated, with divination amounting to only about a quarter of its 88 pages.

Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. 1, 1978 and 2, 1986, are essential purchases. Vol. 4 has occasionally some material that he didn't find earlier, but it is hardly worth buying the book for. The other two I look at constantly. Available in libraries, and frequently for sale somewhere.

Game of Tarot, by Michael Dummett, 1980. Unobtainable except from libraries. The seminal work on the tarot from a scientific perspective. These days, it's mostly a reference work, but something you have to read on a particular issue if you want to think it through. Someone should put it on the Web.

John Shephard, The Tarot Trumps: Cosmos in Miniature, the Structure and Symbolism of the Twenty-Two Tarot Trump Cards, 1980. Available cheaply. A forgotten classic, in my view not in the least outmoded.

Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot, a Textbook of Mystical Philosophy, 1983, online at https://archive.org/details/RobertWang- ... Tarot-1983. This is supposedly the best introduction to the Golden Dawn tradition of tarot interpretation. It certainly is on a different level from Decker and Dummett's Occult Tarot (see below).

Robert O'Neill, Tarot Symbolism, 1986. Another forgotten classic, somewhat useless these days. Available from J.-M David's Association for Tarot Studies.

Stephen R. Franklin, Origins of the Tarot Deck: a study of the Astronomical Substructure of Game and Divining Boards, 1988. Snippets are online. In the Bidev et al tradition. In my local library, quite forgotten about even by me. Surely not worth reading.

Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, A History of The Occult Tarot 1870-1970, 2002. Snippets at https://books.google.com/books?id=0YB-A ... 0Q6AEIIjAB. This is meant as a continuation of Wicked Pack of Cards. I haven't found it very useful. You'd hardly guess, except for some names, that it covers much the same people as Wang's book.

Tiberio Gonnard and Giordano Berti, The Visconti Tarot, Scarabeo, 2002. Berti just wrote the introduction. Translation from Italian. Claims to be about cartomancy, but the short cartomantic interpretations are standard occultist views and have little to do with the very detailed and valuable analysis of the symbolism in the details of the PMB cards.

Michael Dummett and John McLeod, A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: the Game of Triumphs, vol. 1 and vol. 2, 2004. Vol. 1 is available in U.S. libraries. I don't know vol. 2. For specialists only.

Paul Huson, Mystical origins of the tarot, from ancient roots to modern usage, 2004. Generous selections online at https://books.google.com/books?id=D3JnAwAAQBAJ. Good job relating Etteilla's word-lists to those of the Golden Dawn. The first 50 pages or so are online, then selected pages (discussion of Golden Dawn omitted). Accurate, readable, one of the best introductions currently in English, although you wouldn't guess that from the title.

Robert Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, Divination, 2005. Historical part online at https://books.google.com/books?id=jQdGi ... &q&f=false. Tries to be historical and reflects current thinking, but not very careful about historical details. If he doesn't give a good footnote, don't trust him. If he does, read the source, as he doesn't always get it right. His latest book, Tarot and Alchemy, is worse. His idea of alchemy is that it is a set of pretty pictures worth associating to the occult tarot. Needless to say, he is very popular. He does have interesting intuitions.

Alain Bougearel, Franco Cardini, and Andrea Vitali, coordinators: The Caravan of Tarot: Tarots - History-Art-Magic. Online at http://www.letarot.it/cgi-bin/pages/mos ... nglese.pdf. Also in print. For Italian and French version links, see those sections. Unclear when it was published. The title page says 1995--an exhibition then-- but the back page has 2006. It's pretty good.

Ross Sinclair Caldwell, Thierry Depaulis, and Marco Ponzi, Explaining the Tarot: Two Italian Renaissance Essays on the Making of the Tarot Pack, 2010. The Discorso by Piscina is online, but not the Anonymous, almost as indispensable. Both are 1560s Italy, essential works.

Depaulis, Le Tarot Révélé, 2013. Undoubtedly the most up to date and accurate short introduction to tarot history now available. There remain some glaringly unjustified statements--of which Franco Pratesi's work in 2016 has looked at some issues in his chapter 1. The book has summaries in English and German, of use to someone who wants it in a 5 page nutshell.

Vitali, ed. Il Castello dei Tarocchi, 2010. 19 essays by 12 authors, many known on THF, all in Italian.

Sandrina Bandera and Marco Tanzi “Quelle carte de triumphi che se fanno a Cremona”: I Tarocchi dei Bembo, 2013. Exhibition catalog with latest opinions on Brera-Brambilla, Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo, and occasionally even the Cary-Yale. Some excerpts, with my translations, and pictures from the book at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1058&hilit=Bandera.

Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes par M***. 1773 second edition of French original online in Gallica. https://books.google.com/books?id=CI85A ... alse.There is supposedly a translation into English by Caitlin Matthews, which you can get as part of a course on the Petit Etteilla, which is what this book gives a cartomantic--pardon, cartonomantic--system for. I once saw the course advertised but can't find it currently. He later expanded this system to include the tarot.

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the second Cahier of this Work, c. 1785. Selections transcribed and translated by me at http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/ (but not the posts ending "...in the Etteilla tradition", which are something else.

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the third Cahier of this Work. Translated in full with supplements by me at http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com/, with links to a transcription of the original. This is the first of the Cahiers actually published, in 1783 (I suspect that the "1783" on the title page of the First Cahier is to be taken with a grain of salt. It is probably not the original edition, no matter what it says.)

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the fourth Cahier of this Work, c. 1786?. Reprinted in Jaques Halbronn, Etteilla: L'Astrologie du Livre de Thot (1785) suivi par Recherches sur L'Histoire de l"Astrologie et du Tarot, par Jacques Halbronn, 1993. This is Etteilla's attempt to relate his tarot to astrology, chiefly by means of assigning the zodiac signs in order to cards 1-12 of his deck and the planets, in order, to cards 71-77, with 68-70 given to three other astrological signs. The rest I don't understand. I have not tried to translate any of it.

Claude Hugand-Jejalel (a follower of Etteilla), Faites-mieux, j'y consense, ou Les Instructions d'Isis, Divulgees par un Electeur de la Commune de Lyon, en l'annee 1789 (Do better, I agree, or The Instructions of Isis, Divulged by an Elector of the Commune of Lyon, in the year 1789). I have transcribed and translated a portion of this pamphlet, which explains the layout of the ancient "Temple of Memphis" as understood by Etteilla, at http://templeinmemphis.blogspot.com/

Oswald Wirth, Tarot of the Magicians. Most recent edition with helpful forward by Mary Greer, 2012. This is a reissue, with some mistakes, of the 1980 translation put out by Wieser, which is more accurate (the 2012 did not repage some of the internal references which now had different page numbers) and has more of Wirth's illustrations. The 1980 is relatively inexpensive. The translation is sometimes inaccurate toward the end (and in the title!). So it should be checked against Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Age, originally 1927, continually reprinted in French with re-engraved images of the majors. I have used Wirth in my blog on "Tarot and Kabbalah", starting with the post at http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/2015/ ... latin.html, to show his continuity with earlier sources.

On Depaulis, Le Tarot Révélé, 2013: I think the single most useful thing we, or maybe I, could do for beginners, and perhaps non-beginners, would be to do a translation of at least the first five chapters of this book (up to p. 70, at least a third of which is pictures), which we would all annotate with suggestions for further study. It is not very long, filled with pictures that can be skipped, but maps and tables that can't. However I am wondering about the ramifications as far as infringing on the territory of others, namely the author and the publisher. But it seems a shape to limit the access to this book.

Also, in Italian, there are three other books worthy of note:

Franco Pratesi, Giochi di carte nel Granducato di Toscana, 2015.

Franco Pratesi, Giochi di carte nella repubblica fiorentina, 2016. I know that this one at least in part reproduces essays that are in Italian on his website.

P. A. Rossi, I. Li Vigni, eds. Il Ludus Triumphorum o Tarot: carte de gioco o alfabeto del destino?, 2011. These are papers from a conference in Genoa in 2010. Paolo Rossi has an article collecting earliest references to playing cards and triumphs. There are a few we haven't looked at in detail. I will try to post and translate those passages.

Added Jan. 4: Biancastella Antonino, Morena Poltronieri, Ernesto Fazioli, Antichi giochi e Tarocchi a Bologna. 2014. Papers read at a Dec. 2014 conference in conjunction with an exhibition at the University of Bologna, with pictures of some items. Articles by Andrea Vitali ("Ludus triomphorum" al "Ludus Tarochorum"), one by Gerolomo Zorli on the game of tarocchino bolognese, Giovanni Pelosini on hermeticism and tarocchi, and several others. I regret to say I have not yet studied it in sufficient depth.

mikeh wrote:Revised Jan. 4, adding one item at the bottom and a few more comments on the usefulness of the books mentioned.

Yes, good idea, Huck, especially since many of the books and articles are online, one place or another. I suppose those count as websites, but I will consider them books and articles.

We will all have different ideas about what is worth putting in such a list. So I am reserving this space for my list, which I will update as I can, from my posts. I am for the moment dealing only with books, putting them in chronological order, but in 3 categories, with links, as the books themselves are largely unobtainable except when online. I am only listing ones l have personally examined, in one form or other. I am mostly including books from 1966 and after, except that I have a historical section of major esoteric tarot original works since 1770, because I have done a lot with the ones I list.

Jan. 2, 2017:

Books in English:

Moakley, Gertrude, The Tarot cards painted by Bonifacio Bembo, 1966. I would call this book the beginning of the scientific approach to the tarot. Available in libraries. These days it's more of a reference work than anything else.

Dieter Hoffman, The Playing Card: an illustrated history, 1972. Translated from German. Not hard to find.

Brian Innes, The Tarot: How to use and interpret the cards, 1977. Actually a good introduction to the history of the 22 "major arcana", including the occultists' decks, profusely illustrated, with divination amounting to only about a quarter of its 88 pages.

Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. 1, 1978 and 2, 1986, are essential purchases. Vol. 4 has occasionally some material that he didn't find earlier, but it is hardly worth buying the book for. The other two I look at constantly. Available in libraries, and frequently for sale somewhere.

Game of Tarot, by Michael Dummett, 1980. Unobtainable except from libraries. The seminal work on the tarot from a scientific perspective. These days, it's mostly a reference work, but something you have to read on a particular issue if you want to think it through. Someone should put it on the Web.

John Shephard, The Tarot Trumps: Cosmos in Miniature, the Structure and Symbolism of the Twenty-Two Tarot Trump Cards, 1980. Available cheaply. A forgotten classic, in my view not in the least outmoded.

Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot, a Textbook of Mystical Philosophy, 1983, online at https://archive.org/details/RobertWang- ... Tarot-1983. This is supposedly the best introduction to the Golden Dawn tradition of tarot interpretation. It certainly is on a different level from Decker and Dummett's Occult Tarot (see below).

Robert O'Neill, Tarot Symbolism, 1986. Another forgotten classic, somewhat useless these days. Available from J.-M David's Association for Tarot Studies.

Stephen R. Franklin, Origins of the Tarot Deck: a study of the Astronomical Substructure of Game and Divining Boards, 1988. Snippets are online. In the Bidev et al tradition. In my local library, quite forgotten about even by me. Surely not worth reading.

Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, A History of The Occult Tarot 1870-1970, 2002. Snippets at https://books.google.com/books?id=0YB-A ... 0Q6AEIIjAB. This is meant as a continuation of Wicked Pack of Cards. I haven't found it very useful. You'd hardly guess, except for some names, that it covers much the same people as Wang's book.

Tiberio Gonnard and Giordano Berti, The Visconti Tarot, Scarabeo, 2002. Berti just wrote the introduction. Translation from Italian. Claims to be about cartomancy, but the short cartomantic interpretations are standard occultist views and have little to do with the very detailed and valuable analysis of the symbolism in the details of the PMB cards.

Michael Dummett and John McLeod, A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: the Game of Triumphs, vol. 1 and vol. 2, 2004. Vol. 1 is available in U.S. libraries. I don't know vol. 2. For specialists only.

Paul Huson, Mystical origins of the tarot, from ancient roots to modern usage, 2004. Generous selections online at https://books.google.com/books?id=D3JnAwAAQBAJ. Good job relating Etteilla's word-lists to those of the Golden Dawn. The first 50 pages or so are online, then selected pages (discussion of Golden Dawn omitted). Accurate, readable, one of the best introductions currently in English, although you wouldn't guess that from the title.

Robert Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, Divination, 2005. Historical part online at https://books.google.com/books?id=jQdGi ... &q&f=false. Tries to be historical and reflects current thinking, but not very careful about historical details. If he doesn't give a good footnote, don't trust him. If he does, read the source, as he doesn't always get it right. His latest book, Tarot and Alchemy, is worse. His idea of alchemy is that it is a set of pretty pictures worth associating to the occult tarot. Needless to say, he is very popular. He does have interesting intuitions.

Alain Bougearel, Franco Cardini, and Andrea Vitali, coordinators: The Caravan of Tarot: Tarots - History-Art-Magic. Online at http://www.letarot.it/cgi-bin/pages/mos ... nglese.pdf. Also in print. For Italian and French version links, see those sections. Unclear when it was published. The title page says 1995--an exhibition then-- but the back page has 2006. It's pretty good.

Ross Sinclair Caldwell, Thierry Depaulis, and Marco Ponzi, Explaining the Tarot: Two Italian Renaissance Essays on the Making of the Tarot Pack, 2010. The Discorso by Piscina is online, but not the Anonymous, almost as indispensable. Both are 1560s Italy, essential works.

Depaulis, Le Tarot Révélé, 2013. Undoubtedly the most up to date and accurate short introduction to tarot history now available. There remain some glaringly unjustified statements--of which Franco Pratesi's work in 2016 has looked at some issues in his chapter 1. The book has summaries in English and German, of use to someone who wants it in a 5 page nutshell.

Vitali, ed. Il Castello dei Tarocchi, 2010. 19 essays by 12 authors, many known on THF, all in Italian.

Sandrina Bandera and Marco Tanzi “Quelle carte de triumphi che se fanno a Cremona”: I Tarocchi dei Bembo, 2013. Exhibition catalog with latest opinions on Brera-Brambilla, Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo, and occasionally even the Cary-Yale. Some excerpts, with my translations, and pictures from the book at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1058&hilit=Bandera.

Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes par M***. 1773 second edition of French original online in Gallica. https://books.google.com/books?id=CI85A ... alse.There is supposedly a translation into English by Caitlin Matthews, which you can get as part of a course on the Petit Etteilla, which is what this book gives a cartomantic--pardon, cartonomantic--system for. I once saw the course advertised but can't find it currently. He later expanded this system to include the tarot.

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the second Cahier of this Work, c. 1785. Selections transcribed and translated by me at http://etteillastrumps.blogspot.com/ (but not the posts ending "...in the Etteilla tradition", which are something else.

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the third Cahier of this Work. Translated in full with supplements by me at http://thirdcahier.blogspot.com/, with links to a transcription of the original. This is the first of the Cahiers actually published, in 1783 (I suspect that the "1783" on the title page of the First Cahier is to be taken with a grain of salt. It is probably not the original edition, no matter what it says.)

Etteilla, How to amuse oneself with the deck cards named tarot, Serving as the fourth Cahier of this Work, c. 1786?. Reprinted in Jaques Halbronn, Etteilla: L'Astrologie du Livre de Thot (1785) suivi par Recherches sur L'Histoire de l"Astrologie et du Tarot, par Jacques Halbronn, 1993. This is Etteilla's attempt to relate his tarot to astrology, chiefly by means of assigning the zodiac signs in order to cards 1-12 of his deck and the planets, in order, to cards 71-77, with 68-70 given to three other astrological signs. The rest I don't understand. I have not tried to translate any of it.

Claude Hugand-Jejalel (a follower of Etteilla), Faites-mieux, j'y consense, ou Les Instructions d'Isis, Divulgees par un Electeur de la Commune de Lyon, en l'annee 1789 (Do better, I agree, or The Instructions of Isis, Divulged by an Elector of the Commune of Lyon, in the year 1789). I have transcribed and translated a portion of this pamphlet, which explains the layout of the ancient "Temple of Memphis" as understood by Etteilla, at http://templeinmemphis.blogspot.com/

Oswald Wirth, Tarot of the Magicians. Most recent edition with helpful forward by Mary Greer, 2012. This is a reissue, with some mistakes, of the 1980 translation put out by Wieser, which is more accurate (the 2012 did not repage some of the internal references which now had different page numbers) and has more of Wirth's illustrations. The 1980 is relatively inexpensive. The translation is sometimes inaccurate toward the end (and in the title!). So it should be checked against Le Tarot des Imagiers du Moyen Age, originally 1927, continually reprinted in French with re-engraved images of the majors. I have used Wirth in my blog on "Tarot and Kabbalah", starting with the post at http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/2015/ ... latin.html, to show his continuity with earlier sources.

On Depaulis, Le Tarot Révélé, 2013: I think the single most useful thing we, or maybe I, could do for beginners, and perhaps non-beginners, would be to do a translation of at least the first five chapters of this book (up to p. 70, at least a third of which is pictures), which we would all annotate with suggestions for further study. It is not very long, filled with pictures that can be skipped, but maps and tables that can't. However I am wondering about the ramifications as far as infringing on the territory of others, namely the author and the publisher. But it seems a shape to limit the access to this book.

Also, in Italian, there are three other books worthy of note:

Franco Pratesi, Giochi di carte nel Granducato di Toscana, 2015.

Franco Pratesi, Giochi di carte nella repubblica fiorentina, 2016. I know that this one at least in part reproduces essays that are in Italian on his website.

P. A. Rossi, I. Li Vigni, eds. Il Ludus Triumphorum o Tarot: carte de gioco o alfabeto del destino?, 2011. These are papers from a conference in Genoa in 2010. Paolo Rossi has an article collecting earliest references to playing cards and triumphs. There are a few we haven't looked at in detail. I will try to post and translate those passages.

Added Jan. 4: Biancastella Antonino, Morena Poltronieri, Ernesto Fazioli, Antichi giochi e Tarocchi a Bologna. 2014. Papers read at a Dec. 2014 conference in conjunction with an exhibition at the University of Bologna, with pictures of some items. Articles by Andrea Vitali ("Ludus triomphorum" al "Ludus Tarochorum"), one by Gerolomo Zorli on the game of tarocchino bolognese, Giovanni Pelosini on hermeticism and tarocchi, and several others. I regret to say I have not yet studied it in sufficient depth.

Either, a presentation of Selected ressources with a necessary personnal comment - which is interesting for having a point of view from a valuable reader (your listing)
or
a listing of what is available - but without appreciations (Huck's listing)?

Maybe as the posts are under the authorship of the author of the post, both ways could be considered as correct.